


All the Wrong Memories

by Riona



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, identity crisis, the Carlos/Akane took place in a different universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 08:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14690480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: With all these memories from different timelines, Carlos is finding it hard to keep it together.





	All the Wrong Memories

Carlos still feels a little awkward about dropping by Junpei and Akane’s hotel room. He doesn’t want to impose. But his head’s getting pretty bad, and it’s not like there are many people who can help him with his specific problem. And, well, he doesn’t know how many opportunities he’ll have to see them before they head back to Japan.

Junpei’s not in today. It doesn’t seem to bother Akane – she greets him as warmly as ever – but Carlos finds himself feeling selfconscious. He sits on the bed next to her, then gets up and heads over to the chair at the desk instead. Probably would have been less awkward to stay where he was. It’s too late now; going _back_ to sit on the bed would be disastrous.

“Is something bothering you?” Akane asks.

“We’re all alive, right?” Carlos asks. “We’re in the universe where we all lived and got out.”

It’s a little hard to be sure, sometimes. He has to check in with her when the memories get too tangled.

The nervous tightness in his chest eases when she nods. He tries not to think too hard about whether another Carlos just asked that question in another universe and got a different answer.

“You’ll get better with time,” she says. “It’s not that hard to know what timeline you’re in.”

“I guess I managed it for most of my life,” he says. “Never realised there were other options. There’s just... so much in my head, now, all the time.” He hesitates. He’s not sure how to articulate this question. “How do you know who you are?”

“Who you are?” Akane asks.

“All these different timeline memories,” he says. “All the different versions of you in your head. I remember killing you with an axe, and I remember killing myself to protect you. It doesn’t seem like those two Carloses could be the same guy.”

“You’re still a consistent person,” Akane says. “To some extent, at least. The versions of you in different timelines are shaped by your different experiences, but a decision has to be feasible to create a new timeline. So there are timelines where you kill me under pressure, but there aren’t any timelines where you just kill me for no reason, because that’s not who you are.”

He didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to hear that of course all those terrible actions different versions of him took weren’t _him_ , not really. “I pressed that yellow button. I killed six people.”

Six he knew about, at least. He’s still kind of confused about Sean.

“Not in this universe,” she says, gently.

“But now I know I’m capable of that.”

“We’re all capable of that. Our lives were at risk.”

He sighs out a laugh. “You’re really used to all this, huh?”

“Sorry.” She’s been holding his gaze steadily, when he’s been brave enough to look at her, but she glances aside now. “Junpei says I can seem cold about these things.”

“No. No, it’s fine.”

He pauses. He doesn’t want to bring this up, but if it’s true that every decision he made there was consistent with his personality... well, he guesses it’s something that needs to be addressed.

“Do you remember what happened in the AB Game?” he asks, quietly.

“I remember a few permutations of it,” she says. “I could probably find more if I made an effort. Why do you ask?”

“I... betrayed you and Junpei,” he says. “I let both of you die.”

She nods. “In some timelines, yes.”

“How can you... be okay with me? How can you want to be around me, knowing I did that? If this version of me is still basically the same person...”

“Well, I did beat you to death in most of those timelines.” She says it so perfectly casually that it makes his skin prickle. “I’d say we’re more or less even.”

“It’s that simple? I kill you, you kill me, those versions of us are dead forever, and the ones here just carry on like nothing happened?”

“If I held a grudge for everything people did in a different universe,” she says, “it’d get exhausting, don’t you think?”

-

He’s glad to have Akane around, someone who’s apparently an expert in this whole other-timelines thing, someone who can explain it to him. He doesn’t want to think about having to figure it out by himself. From what Maria’s said since waking up, it sounds like that might kind of be what happened to her; other timelines started creeping into her life, and she couldn’t figure out what was real, and in the end she was just overwhelmed by it all.

( _Since waking up_. It feels like his heart is bursting inside him whenever he thinks of it. She needs time at the hospital to get back up to a healthy weight, to figure out how to operate her body again, but she’s awake, she’s alive.)

So it’s good to have Akane. It’s just... there are some things he can’t really talk to her about.

Carlos will freely admit that his plan to whisper in Akane’s ear, back at the bomb shelter, was not a good one. He’s lucky she’s still willing to treat him as a friend after he freaked her out like that. And he was planning to whisper to her as quickly as possible, so she’d know she wasn’t in real danger, but – but he pinned her down and he got distracted for a couple of seconds, because he’d just opened the door to some _weird_ memories.

He still struggles to pick out exactly which memories happened in which histories, but Junpei was dead. Akane... didn’t take it well, understandably. And there were timelines where she killed Carlos, there were timelines where he killed her (he hates to think about it), but there were also the timelines where she asked him to throw her down on the couch in the lounge, for comfort, for distraction, _no consequences, we’re going to have our memories erased anyway_.

And in one universe he said _no, it wouldn’t feel right,_ and in another he had tried to lose it all in her, everything, the deaths, the imprisonment, the fact that their friend had been cut into pieces and turned into some kind of sick game. Tried to bury himself inside her without thinking about pressing Junpei’s severed hand against an authentication panel. Told himself he wouldn’t remember.

And maybe he didn’t in _that_ timeline, at least.

Does Akane remember it as well? Should he... say something? What’s the accepted etiquette after you sleep with someone in a different universe?

She seems so good at compartmentalising the different timelines, but it’s... strange, thinking she might know the feel of his body in the way he knows hers. In this world, where Junpei is alive and well, and Carlos’s friend, and _engaged_ to her.

Carlos needs to get better at this morphogenetic field thing, so he can access the memories of the Carlos who’s actually bold enough to ask her about it. He’d know what she’d say in response, and he wouldn’t technically have to be the one to bring it up. Perfect.

-

“Carlos?”

He doesn’t realise until her voice breaks in that he’s been spacing out. He has to take a moment to register his surroundings, ground himself, pin down which reality he’s in. It’s morning. He’s alive. They’re all alive. He’s in his kitchen, and Akane’s dropped by to check on him and offer to walk Gab.

“I could make the coffee,” she says.

Oh, and he’s supposed to be making coffee. Right. “No, it’s fine, I can—”

“I’ll make the coffee,” she says, firmly, taking the frying pan out of his hands.

Frying pan? He really _has_ been spacing out.

“Thanks.” He crouches down by the cabinets to pet Gab. That seems like a task even he can accomplish right now.

For a couple of minutes, Akane doesn’t speak. Making coffee, presumably. Carlos can’t see exactly what she’s doing, because he is focusing with great determination on Gab and his furry little stomach, trying to drive every other thought out of his head.

“What’s on your mind?” Akane asks at last.

Carlos looks up. Considers saying it’s nothing. But he’s known enough of Akane, across enough different timelines, to know it’s not easy to get away with lying to her.

“Just timeline stuff,” he says.

She nods. “A lot of people struggle to get used to it.”

He gives Gab a last pat and stands up. His kitchen’s too small, and he and Akane are too close, but their relationship in other histories isn’t really what he’s thinking about right now.

“There’s a universe where my parents lived,” he says.

She looks at him in silence for a moment. “That’s a thought I’m familiar with. I’m sorry.”

“Did you...” He wants to ask whether she’s ever thought about going there, leaving that tragedy in another time, but he can’t find the words. Maybe he’s afraid she’ll leave.

“Yes, you could SHIFT to that universe,” she says. Evidently he hasn’t succeeded at concealing what he’s thinking. “But it would probably kill that version of yourself, and the things you’ve been through have changed you. You’re not the person who belongs there any more. Don’t you think it would scare them, seeing how their son’s personality and memories have changed overnight?”

She’s probably not wrong. But it’s hard not to be tempted.

“There’s no perfect universe, Carlos,” Akane says. “You’ve seen how things can branch out from a single moment. The fire was a terrible thing, but perhaps there are good things in your life that wouldn’t have happened without it.” She hooks her arm through his. “For example, if you hadn’t needed that money for Maria...”

“I wouldn’t have been killed several hundred times?” Carlos asks.

“Well,” Akane admits, “yes. Maybe that’s a bad example.”

“I know what you mean,” Carlos says. “I wouldn’t have met you guys.”

“Is there any chance it’s enough just to know they still exist somewhere?” she asks, slipping her arm out from his. “Or are you going to leave us behind?”

Is it really his choice? Is anything his choice? When he reaches a decision in his life, does he really make the decision himself, or is it just a question of which universe he happens to end up in, the flip of a coin?

She’s looking up at him, waiting. He strokes her hair back behind her ear, realising too late that that’s not normal, it’s too intimate a gesture. So many different universes. It’s hard to remember who they are to each other, sometimes.

There’s probably a timeline where he kisses her here. It isn’t this one.

-

He doesn’t SHIFT to a world where the fire didn’t happen. Or at least he hasn’t, yet.

All else aside, it feels like he’d be making himself a target for other versions of himself.

It’s been quietly haunting him ever since the implications of all his SHIFTing really hit him. He knows, now, that he’s the kind of person who’s prepared to sacrifice his own alternate-universe self. How does he know he won’t find himself on the other end of that? It feels like at any moment another Carlos might switch in, take over his life, leave him to die somewhere.

It feels like he has to be careful, he can’t make his life too good, or another version of him might steal it.

Maria’s awake. Maria’s alive and conscious and beautiful, thanks to Akane and Junpei’s help, and that in itself might make him a target. But he can’t regret it. If it means he might suddenly find himself dying in a strange universe, she’s worth it.

And she’s the reason he knows he’ll never really make the jump to that other universe. There’ll be another Maria there, he knows, but he can’t abandon her.

-

The buzzer goes off. Carlos... wasn’t expecting company. He’d settled himself in for a long evening of staring at the ceiling and trying to remember what’s real.

He heads over to the intercom.

“ _Yo,_ ” Junpei’s voice says. “ _Ugh. I mean, not yo. Pretend I said something else._ ”

“Junpei?”

“ _Akane said you’ve been freaking out about other universes,_ ” Junpei says. “ _I get it. It messed me up when I first started remembering them. So we’ve come over to eat pizza and talk about how much the morphogenetic field sucks._ ”

Carlos scrubs a hand through his hair. “Wait, _we?_ Who are _we_ supposed to be?”

“ _Everyone from Dcom. Well, everyone who’s not in jail. Or, y’know, Q._ ”

What? Carlos does a quick count under his breath. “Seven? Seven people?”

“ _Technically, six people and one robot,_ ” Junpei says. “ _Technically._ ”

“Junpei, I can’t fit seven people in my apartment!”

“ _We’ll figure it out,_ ” Junpei says. “ _We’ll stack them on top of each other if we have to. Akane thinks you need company, and that means you’re getting company._ ”

“And nobody thought I might have plans?” Carlos asks. He’s trying not to laugh; he figures at least a _little_ righteous indignation is called for before he lets them in. “You thought I’d just drop everything for you?”

“ _We figured you were way too nice to turn away all seven of us,_ ” Junpei says, and Carlos can hear the smirk in his voice. “ _Open the door already._ ”

-

They figure it out. Junpei and Akane sit at the foot of Carlos’s bed; Sigma, Phi and Diana squeeze themselves together against the headboard. Gab settles in the centre of the bed, evidently delighted to have so much company. Eric takes the desk chair, while Carlos brings one of his two dining chairs into the bedroom for himself. (He’s really going to have to invest in more seating now that he has a _group_ of friends, people who might not just come over one at a time.) He offers the other chair to Sean, but Sean chooses to sit on his desk instead, kicking his heels in the air.

“Oh, hey, so there’s a chair available?” Phi asks, hopping off the bed. “That’s definitely mine. Gotta give the parents some alone time.”

Diana looks around the room. “I’m not sure I’d call this ‘alone time’, technically.”

“I mean no disrespect to your mother when I say this,” Sigma says, “but we’ve had more than enough alone time, in any case.”

“Uh,” Carlos says, “you don’t have to answer this, but can you tell me how this family thing... happened? I haven’t really been able to get my head around it.”

Sigma and Diana glance at each other.

“It’s not a happy story,” Diana says, reaching out to squeeze Sigma’s hand, “but it gave us each other. And Phi.”

“And the son who turned out to be a disappointment before he was even born,” Sigma mutters.

“At least I know I’ll never have to worry about any sense of sibling inadequacy,” Phi says.

“So what happened?” Sean asks, leaning forward eagerly.

The story Sigma and Diana tell is striking in a lot of ways, but what really stands out to Carlos is the fact that their feelings for each other evidently developed in a different timeline, and they ended up carrying them over into this one. Maybe it’s not that easy to wall off other histories, write off emotions from them as belonging to a different version of you. He tries not to glance too guiltily at Akane.

She’s alive, and she’s his friend. It’s enough. If they only go beyond that in timelines where Junpei is dead, he’s glad to be in this one.

He looks around the crowded little room. Diana, Sigma. Phi. Eric. Sean. Junpei and Akane.

For once, he’s not worrying about which version of himself he is, which history he’s ended up in. When they’re all gathered together like this (well, almost all), it’s easy to believe they survived and escaped.

He finds himself smiling. “We should do this more often.”

“What’s that I hear?” Junpei asks, cupping a hand behind his ear. “Is that _gratitude_ from Mr Nobody-Thought-I’d-Have-Plans?”

“It was still a terrible idea not to check,” Carlos says. “I’m just saying we should have more _properly planned_ meet-ups.”

Akane reaches over from the bed to pat him on the knee. “We will.”

(In another universe, Carlos cracks and asks, “Okay, are you messing with me?” and Akane starts to laugh, and that sets Carlos off, and Junpei asks, “Hey, what’s going on?” several times in increasingly indignant tones.

It’s not this universe, but the memory strikes Carlos, and from Akane’s grin and quick wink he suspects she remembers too.

Even if it doesn’t erase those haunting moments with Akane from other timelines, it breaks the tension. Carlos laughs and sits back, feeling freer than he has in a long time.)


End file.
